Random thoughts about teaching math

District Assessment Plan

In an earlier post, I suggested a school assessment plan, even though I have never been a school principal. In this one, I intend to outline a district assessment plan, even though I have never been a superintendent or trustee.

This plan is aimed at secondary (7-12) assessment. The elementary school world is too foreign to me to comment on its assessment practices.

I need to begin by saying that I am glad that the board of trustees in Edmonton Public Schools has voted to review their assessment procedures. Never before has assessment been such a hot topic, and we need to make sure we do this right.

The review must accomplish one thing, and one thing only. We need to emerge from the review with a clear understanding of what grades represent. By “we”, I mean teachers, students, parents, the general public, and the media. Let’s clearly define what we are assessing, and do a better job of communicating it.

I have confidence that our board and superintendent will do this right. Just in case, here’s what I think needs to be included in a district assessment plan. I’m sure theirs will be quite a bit longer.

The Plan

Notice the use of “demonstrated”. Kids have to do it so we can assess it.

Kids can demonstrate 0 ability compared to the curriculum. We can enter 0 if we have evidence that shows they know nothing.

If the student doesn’t demonstrate (ie misses the assessment) we do not assign any grade. We put in one of two codes. (See below)

Behaviour

In curricula that include behaviour, we will assess behaviour. In curricula that do not include behaviour, we will not assess behaviour. We will, however, report on behaviour. We will do this in the form of comments, or a grade in categories like employability, effort, ability to meet deadlines, post-secondary preparedness, or whatever other rather subjective measures will make people happy. We are limited here by our current grade book software. I won’t name them, but it is written by a giant textbook company.

Grade Book Software

We need to take over how our grade books work. They need to adapt to our needs, not the other way around. If our current provider won’t adapt, we need to find a new one. Here is what we need our grade books to do.

The grade book will allow only one of three things to be entered into it.

A Mark – The mark entered must be supported by evidence. Lack of evidence is reported differently.

An “Omit” – The omit code would not factor into student grades. This code is the option for teachers to leave out small assignments, or to excuse students who have extenuating circumstances. It should not be used for major assessments.

An “Incomplete” – Incomplete indicates just that. The student didn’t do the assessment, and the teacher needs him to. We need to get our grade book to function such that as soon as an “incomplete” is entered, it no longer calculates the cumulative grade. Instead, it reports the cumulative grade as, wait for it… “Incomplete”

Notes on Incomplete

The entry of the incomplete would also automatically generate a comment which would appear on all reports, and be sent home to parents via School Zone. The comment would say something like this:

Due to missing assessments, I am unable to determine Kevin’s grade at this time. Once the missed assessments are completed, a cumulative grade will be calculated. Please contact me to make arrangements for Kevin to complete any missing assessments. Failure to complete the assessments may result in Kevin having to repeat this course.

I used a similar process in my last teaching position, and it worked wonderfully. Parents really took an active role in making sure those assessments came in to me.

How This Plan Affects Various Kinds of Students

Top End Kids

Our top end kids will react well to this plan. They tend to react well to everything we do to them. They will learn that we value performance compared to the curriculum. They will learn that the way to get high grades is to master the course material. They will learn that there are certain assessments that them must do. They will be well prepared for university life, where most courses use only a handful of assessments to determine a grade.

Our 26% Who Drop Out or Fail to Complete High School

26% of Alberta students fail to complete high school. That’s thousands of dropouts lacking the skills to be productive members of society. There are all kinds of reasons that students fail to complete high school. We need to fix the ones that are our fault. This plan will help most of them.

We won’t end up failing lazy students who could actually do the work. This plan ensures that lazy students are forced to do the work so we can assess them.

We will teach them that we expect them to do the work, which will serve them well in employment even if they drop out.

We will be able to extend the course for the kids who are truly struggling. A final grade of “Incomplete” is more supportive than 32%. It says, “Come back to school, and we’ll try to get you through this course so you can graduate from high school and have a better life.”

The Middle Kids

We mistakenly assume that our middle kids all want to be top kids. Some do. Many are happy where they are. Kids that are happy where they are “game” the system that allows zeros. They do the minimum amount that they can to get by with a 50 or 60 or whatever they are happy with. We have taught these kids, by allowing them to take zeros, that they can pick and choose what to do, and still get by. No wonder employers think they are lazy. We’ve taught them to be like that. By allowing them to take a zero, we may have let them believe that their employers will let them pick and choose which tasks they are willing to do in their jobs.

The plan above, whereby the kids have to do the essential assessments, teaches them the opposite. It teaches them that they have to do all aspects of their job, even the ones they may not like as much. That’s responsibility and accountability.

Who We Have to Educate, and How

To make this work, we need to get the following messages to the following people.

Students

They need to know that they can’t skate by and do nothing. We have a set of non-negotiable assessments, and they are expected to do them.

Teachers

We need to help teachers understand that many of us give kids too many little things “for marks”. We need to get deeply into formative assessment and how to embed it in our classrooms. Most of what I used to chase kids for should have been formative.

We also need to get into the notion of “professional judgement”. Proponents of zeros argue that they want professional judgment to allow them to give zeros. Professional judgement, in an assessment context, dictates that the teacher use other evidence (other assessments, observations, re-dos, etc…) to put a mark in a grade book that reflects what the student knows. See above: The mark that goes into the grade book must be supported by evidence.

If you believe the student truly knows zero, then put in zero. When you do that, you’ll realize you’ve really been harsh on your own teaching skills, though. If I had a kid who had been in my class for any length of time, and I thought he truly knew nothing, what does that say about my teaching ability?

School Administrators

For this to work, you have to be the ones chasing kids. Teachers are busy and stressed.

Parents

You need to be taught that our grades will now reflect how your child is performing compared to the curricular standards.

Right now, unfortunately, you can’t be sure. If my daughter comes home with 40% in Math 10, I don’t know what that means. It might mean she is bad at math. It might also mean she is good at math, but didn’t do all the things her teacher asked her to do. We need to clear this up, because the interventions I need to take as a parent are very different. In one case, I need to get her some math help. In the other case, I need to kick her butt.

Public

We are not giving kids free passes. We are not giving kids free passes. We are not giving kids free passes. The grades they get will be earned. They can earn a zero. But we define an earned zero as demonstrated lack of knowledge. Undemonstrated knowledge is not assessable.

We need to assure the public that the grade assigned represents performance compared to the curriculum. We didn’t artificially lower it by inserting zeros that weren’t earned, and we didn’t artificially inflate it by giving bonus marks or other rewards. The grade represents our best guess as to how well the student mastered the material in the course.

Like this:

Related

4 Responses

Once again, well done John. I too, am optimistic that Edmonton Public will do a thorough examination of their assessment policy and revision it along the lines that you point out here. One thing for certain, the entire world is watching.

May I add one additional consideration, that your assessment plan depart from the 100 point scale and turn to letter grades that represent levels of proficiency (perhaps three levels) and report by outcome rather than task. In keeping with constructivist learning principles proficiency levels would indicate the level of support that the student requires including working at grade level with support, proficient at grade level with little support, and independent of support. This would also prepare us for competencies-based education as the world, and Alberta Education, advance towards competencies.

One might ask, “What about the post secondary institutes that demand percentages?” In response I would suggest that it is the job of universities to develop their own measurment tools for admission requirements. I don’t feel that is our obligation. However, having said that, we could develop a decision rule that would convert proficiencies to a 100 point scale for grade 12s applying for scholarships or entrance to post secondary institutes.

Incidently little has been stated concerning reporting by outcomes in the so-called ‘no-zero’ policy debate. The entire argument around no-zeros is partly predicated on grading by tasks (tests, quizzes, and assignments). If high school teachers were required to report by outcomes it would require more performance-based assessment and each outcome’s grade would be based on a triangulation of evidence. Even if a performance or assignment was missed there would likely be evidence from other performances to base the grade for the outcome on.

I like everything you suggest. I’ve never personally used SBG, but I think it would make the whole zero debate completely irrelevant. I’d love to give it a shot if I go back to the classroom.

I also agree that the 100 point scale is hindering us in this debate. Unfortunately we still live in a world where Alberta Education insists we provide grades in percents. I’d love to figure out how to convince them to change that.

Hi again, John. Thanks for taking the time to reply to my last concern. Being a scientist before a teacher, and having read a lot about the topic, I can see that what’s fuelling our disagreement is our respective experiences with administrators. I respect many of the points that you make, but in the reality that is my daily experience, I see where this may not work in schools with administration like mine. (what proportion of schools have “supportive” admins?)

For some extra background, my former DH advised us about many of the grading practices you describe. During interim reports, when a student has a “code” for incomplete work, I do not report an overall grade and include a comment very similar to the one you write in “notes on incomplete.” I also use a limited number of assessments that are directly related to the skill and performance outcomes in the program of studies. Just this past term, when I release interim marks, I include behaviour comments. This is a work in progress and I’m trying to refine the process so it is informative but not a big burden on my time. This has taken me a long time to get my head around, though I consider it to be part of professional growth.

Where problems arise when I talk to my colleagues is how we report percentage grades while incomplete assignments exist in our grade books. The phrase “use your professional judgement” comes up a lot but doesn’t sit well. In an atmosphere where parents can be aggressive and administrators are more like store managers dealing with customers, when a calculated mark shows inflation due to “codes” as placeholders, it would be easy for a parent to contest the vailidity of a teacher’s professional judgement. Teachers at my school cannot assign an “incomplete” as a final grade, which would be the best description. In light of that, usually a mark that is depressed (compared to the calculated mark) is recorded. This is where my colleagues are uneasy, myself a bit less so. If grades came to an audit (from the government or a parent), there would be a discrepency between a calculated mark and a reported mark. My colleagues don’t feel comfortable with this and so want a grade to input in place of codes.

In an ideal world, the codes would be replaced with the student’s grade after completing the work and there wouldn’t be a problem. However, there are plenty of students at my school whose sense of responsibility is askew and do not complete work even after teacher and administration “encouragement”. Replacing codes with zeros in the final calculation isn’t accurate, but justifies a “depressed” reported mark in the event of an audit. It’s not an elegant solution, but the reason why we got into this situation is because “people” don’t trust teacher grading. Why else would broad assessment policies be thrust into schools? (bad funding rules from the government? improved high school completion rates? I’m being a bit facetious, but just a bit)

My advice: train teachers to be effective, empathetic graders with many tools at their disposal. Make sure that assessments of learning are relatively few and have curricular merit. Train teachers to recognize student ability relative to standards. (this was a lot easier when teachers could collaborate during Diploma exam grading) Create a team atmosphere where teachers, administration, and parents work in concert to advise and encourage students on the path of success. (I don’t feel like this is present at my school, and I wonder how common this feeling is) With these in place, trust that teachers are making the right assessment decisions. After all, they are the best judges of student competencies.

Sorry for the wall of text. I’ve spent a lot of sleepless nights, as you have, thinking about this and to distil it down to this length took a lot of effort.

We’ll get this all figured out. I’m confident of that. Remember, that Alberta has one of the best education systems in the world. We’re doing a pretty good job. We lose too many kids, but the ones we get through tend to do well. Our pedagogy is pretty good.

While assessment is a hot topic, though, we need to clarify for all parties what it is we can and should assess. We’ll write it down, and most teacher will comply. Heck, if they tell me to start grading behaviour (and write it into my curriculum), then I will. In the meantime, we need to get clarity about what our grades mean.